White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial
stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These
moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and
guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the
stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to
reinstate white racial equilibrium. Racial stress results from an
interruption to what is racially familiar. These interruptions can take
a variety of forms and come from a range of sources, including:

Suggesting that a white person’s viewpoint comes from a racialized frame
of reference (challenge to objectivity);

People of color talking directly about their racial perspectives
(challenge to white racial codes);

People of color choosing not to protect the racial feelings of white
people in regards to race (challenge to white racial expectations and
need/entitlement to racial comfort);

People of color not being willing to tell their stories or answer
questions about their racial experiences (challenge to colonialist
relations);

A fellow white not providing agreement with one’s interpretations
(challenge to white solidarity);

Receiving feedback that one’s behavior had a racist impact (challenge to
white liberalism);

Suggesting that group membership is significant (challenge to
individualism);

An acknowledgment that access is unequal between racial groups
(challenge to meritocracy);

Being presented with a person of color in a position of leadership
(challenge to white authority);

Being presented with information about other racial groups through, for
example, movies in which people of color drive the action but are not in
stereotypical roles, or multicultural education (challenge to white
centrality).

In a white dominant environment, each of these challenges becomes
exceptional. In turn, whites are often at a loss for how to respond in
constructive ways. Whites have not had to build the cognitive or
affective skills or develop the stamina that would allow for
constructive engagement across racial divides. Bourdieu’s concept of
habitus10 may be useful here. According to Bourdieu, habitus is a
socialized subjectivity; a set of dispositions which generate practices
and perceptions. As such, habitus only exists in, through and because of
the practices of actors and their interaction with each other and with
the rest of their environment. Based on the previous conditions and
experiences that produce it, habitus produces and reproduces thoughts,
perceptions, expressions and actions. Strategies of response to
“disequilibrium” in the habitus are not based on conscious
intentionality but rather result from unconscious dispositions towards
practice, and depend on the power position the agent occupies in the
social structure. White Fragility may be conceptualized as a product of
the habitus, a response or “condition” produced and reproduced by the
continual social and material advantages of the white structural
position.

Omi & Winant posit the U.S. racial order as an “unstable equilibrium,”
kept equilibrated by the State, but still unstable due to continual
conflicts of interests and challenges to the racial order11. Using Omi &
Winant’s concept of unstable racial equilibrium, white privilege can be
thought of as unstable racial equilibrium at the level of habitus. When
any of the above triggers (challenges in the habitus) occur, the
resulting disequilibrium becomes intolerable. Because White Fragility
finds its support in and is a function of white privilege, fragility and
privilege result in responses that function to restore equilibrium and
return the resources “lost” via the challenge - resistance towards the
trigger, shutting down and/or tuning out, indulgence in emotional
incapacitation such as guilt or “hurt feelings”, exiting, or a
combination of these responses.